Worldwide Child Porn Busts Include 6 Massachusetts Men

BOSTON — Six Massachusetts men among more than 300 people arrested worldwide in connection with a website that authorities described Thursday as the largest child sexual exploitation operation of its kind ever discovered in terms of the volume of content.

The child-porn site, known as "Welcome to Video," was parked on the Darknet, sometimes referred to as the Dark Net, a broad term for portions of the internet purposefully not open to public view.

“Children around the world are safer because of the actions taken by U.S. and foreign law enforcement to prosecute this case and recover funds for victims,” U.S. Attorney Jessie K. Liu said in a press release announcing latest developments in the case.

The six Massachusetts men are:

• Eryk Mark Chamberlin, 25, of Worcester, who pleaded guilty to possession of child pornography and awaits sentencing.
• Jairo Flores, 30, of Cambridge, who pleaded guilty to receipt and possession of child pornography and was sentenced to serve five years in prison followed by five years of supervised release.
• Billy Penaloza, 29, of Dorchester, who pleaded guilty to possession and receipt of child pornography. His sentencing is scheduled for Oct. 22.
• Michael Armstrong, 35, of Randolph, who pleaded guilty to receipt and possession of child pornography. He was sentenced to serve five years in prison followed by five years of supervised release. Restitution will be determined at a future date.
• Al Ramadhanu Soedomo, 28, of Lynn, who pleaded guilty to possession of child pornography and was sentenced to serve 12 months and one day followed by five years of supervised release.
• Phillip Sungmin Hong, 24, of Sharon, who pleaded guilty to receipt and possession of child pornography and whose sentencing is pending.

While most of the arrests occurred last year, the scope and details of the operation have only now become public

On March 5, 2018, agents from anti-crime agencies including those in the United States, United Kingdom, and Korean National Police in South Korea, arrested the site's operator and seized the server that he used, according to the justice department.

The site was run by Jong Woo Son of South Korea, the Justice Department said in a release. He is charged with using a Darknet market that exclusively advertised child sexual exploitation videos available for download by members of the site, the release said. The images seized are being analyzed by the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children.

The server held more than 250,000 videos, and 45 percent of the videos currently analyzed contain new images that have not been previously known to exist.

In addition to the operator of the site, the justice department announced the arrests of an additional 337 site users residing in Alabama, Arkansas, California, Connecticut, Florida, Georgia, Kansas, Louisiana, Maryland, Nebraska, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Texas, Utah, Virginia, Washington State and Washington, D.C. as well as the United Kingdom, South Korea, Germany, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, the Czech Republic, Canada, Ireland, Spain, Brazil and Australia.